1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of optimally nesting the contours of parts to be cut out of a piece of natural leather.
2. Background Art
Various known methods serve for optimizing the cutting out of material and are characterized by the fact that the manual method steps are greatly simplified. See, for example, Federal Republic of Germany Patent 36 27 110 which is equivalent to U.S. Pat. No. 4,941,183. For this purpose, the contours which are to be cut from a flexurally limp material such as leather are not determined by direct application of stencils on the material, but rather the contours are projected onto the material to be cut. This can be done, for example, by scaling the stencils down in size and placing them on a projection table, and projecting the contours to be cut onto the material via a system of reflecting mirrors Furthermore, it is possible to provide an electronic projection unit by means of which contours which are stored in digital form in a computer can be projected directly onto the material to be cut. With these materials, the operator entrusted with the nesting can, in an interactive process, locate the projected contours with due consideration of defective places in the material to be cut.
For further automating the nesting process, particularly for natural leather, it is known from EP OS 0 277 066 to mark the defective places in the leather and to have them processed directly under the control of the cutting system. For this purpose, the defects are marked by the operator by fluorescent means. Then the marked places are detected by a camera and transmitted to a computer system which is provided with a stamping program for stamping out a given set of contours. The detected markings are interpreted by the computer system and are suitably taken into consideration as constraints upon the stamping program, so that the prescribed contours can then be stamped out automatically without defects being present in the material at places which cannot be tolerated. For this purpose, different markings are used by the operator for different qualities of defects, and these different markings can then be taken into consideration later on.
The disclosures of these and all other prior art mentioned herein are incorporated by reference.